The UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) has invested £20 million into subsea high voltage direct current (HVDC) cable manufacturer XLCC to support a new factory in Scotland.
If and when the company achieves specific development and funding milestones, there is a further £67 million investment option.
Alongside a further over £40 million XLCC has separately raised, the funding will go towards creating a new HVDC manufacturing facility in Hunterston, Scotland. Once completed, the facility will support 900 permanent jobs in the area, including over 200 apprenticeships, and will be capable of producing thousands of kilometres of subsea HVDC cabling each year.
John Flint, UKIB CEO, said: “Industry projections indicate that demand for subsea cables will soon exceed existing supply chain capacity. Our support for XLCC is intended to provide confidence to the market, crowding private investment into this sector to boost production capacity in an industry set to have a significant impact on the UK‘s transition to net zero.”
XLCC CEO Ian Douglas added: “The creation of the Hunterston facility in Scotland brings significant investment to the UK, creating highly skilled jobs in advanced manufacturing and project management for decades to come. We welcome the foresight of UKIB and our other investors in recognising the opportunity to create a new force in HVDC cables to address both domestic and global requirements.”
XLCC and the importance of interconnectors
XLCC is playing a major role in one of the world’s most significant international interconnection projects. Xlink’s Morrocco – UK Power Project, which was unveiled in September 2021, will be able to generate 11.5GW of power from large-scale solar and wind facilities, which will be connected to Morocco and the UK via 4000km of undersea HVDC cabling.
XLCC has been commissioned to develop and build the world’s largest cable-laying vessel for this project, a boat capable of installing 20km of subsea cabling every day. As explored in a previous Current± blog, XLCC’s new vessel will have roughly double the cable-laying capacity of the current largest cable-laying vessel.
Meanwhile, a major UK-based interconnector project has just begun construction. Eastern Green Link 2 (EGL2), a 2GW subsea electricity link between Yorkshire and Scotland, began construction last week. National Grid and SSEN Transmission are expected to complete the project in 2029. Once finished, the project is set to be the longest HVDC cable in the UK, with 436km of cables running under the sea and 68km more cabling underground.
